PROVIDENCE — Although those maintaining it disagree, no one from the public could sit and enjoy the city-owned park on the corner of Westminster and Mathewson streets for the last few months, if not longer.

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By
Alisha A. Pina
Posted Jul. 25, 2013 @ 12:01 am

PROVIDENCE — The rules posted for the Robert E. Freeman Memorial Park say don’t play ball, feed the pigeons, get in the water fountain, stand on the benches or enter past dusk — its closing hours.

Although those maintaining it disagree, no one from the public could sit and enjoy the city-owned park on the corner of Westminster and Mathewson streets for the last few months, if not longer.

It was gated and locked. The restaurant, Aspire, also has 15 outdoor tables of four in the park and Hotel Providence staff had been telling people they need to eat at Aspire to get in.

It reopened Wednesday, less than a day after The Providence Journal asked why.

“That’s public property and we expect that it will be open to the public during the [posted] hours,” said David Ortiz, communications director for Mayor Angel Taveras. “When we found out it was gated, we immediately called Hotel Providence.”

Hotel Providence maintains the park for the city, he said.

The Providence Redevelopment Agency had to acquire and demolish four buildings to develop the park. It cost $1.2 million, and its centerpiece is a water fountain with a huge, black granite ball. In 1995, the city named it after the late Robert E. Freeman, former executive director of the Providence Foundation who devoted himself to revitalizing the downtown business district.

Hotel Providence, with Aspire inside it, was opened about eight years later. Developer Stanley Weiss told The Journal in 2003 that the park had become a hangout for drug peddlers, prostitutes and other troublemakers, and some homeless people even did their laundry in the fountain. The granite ball wasn’t working then, and is broken now.

Tom Fitzgibbons, the hotel’s current general manager, said Wednesday that the hotel has been renovating the park, at its expense, since June and the locks secured the unattended area at night.

Despite the Journal pictures showing the locked gates during the day, Fitzgibbons said the locks were removed in the morning.

He said the hotel also locked the park to keep undesirables out because they were coming to nearby convenience stores to buy potpourri, which was laced with synthetic marijuana. Fitzgibbons said they would smoke in the park, and it became a dumping ground for their trash “which took hotel staff two hours a day to clean.”

It says they worked with the police and the General Assembly to reduce the problem.

Said Fitzgibbons, “Though our actions caused some inconvenience to patrons of the park, I think this is a stellar example of how business, city agencies and the legislature can work together to find solutions that work for all and keep our city safe, clean and desirable for business development and resident relocation to downtown.”